Companies

To understand the story about Michael E. Parker’s companies, you must first understand the story of how he was introduced to lean management.

Fascinated with what made operations work, the thought of several processes and groups of people all working together to accomplish a goal sparked Michael’s attention and curiosity, even as a child.  After studying purchasing and operations, and later earning an MBA from Cal State University Hayward, Michael took a post with Toyota.  This position opened his mind to lean management, a brilliant approach to production efficiency. While working at Toyota, Michael ended up in Japan on special assignment at the same time as Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the auto giant’s founder.  He and other leaders noticed Michael during a presentation and selected him to be on a team that would implement lean manufacturing principles throughout North America. This was the beginning of Michael’s journey toward entrepreneurship, as the possibilities of what he learned about lean management intrigued him.

Somewhere along the way, Michael developed a love of the service industry, and had a feeling that what he was learning about lean manufacturing could be applied there.  From what he could see, few service organizations were working anywhere nearly as efficiently or with as much consistent customer focus as they could. And so, during his years at Toyota, he spent lunches and breaks grilling lean experts from Japan on how these principles might be applied outside of manufacturing. In 2001, he went out on his own to show what the concepts might do outside of manufacturing, employing his own approach to business that he called Value-Centered Management, a philosophy that looks at every part of a business, helping managers and team members understand how to truly serve the customer—from the founding philosophies and approach to business, to determining the tangible structure, process and approach that will get the best results.

Today, Michael is still building companies, products and services using the principles of lean and Value-Centered Management.  He has applied these concepts in retail, service, financial, manufacturing, technical, and other industries, and the results are consistent and remarkable. After all, if you know what your customers want and deliver it day by day, how can you fail?